Judgment

Today's two readings present scenes of judgment and condemnation, and then release. In both, the one judged and condemned is a woman. In the Old Testament story of Susanna, the woman is innocent. In the Gospel story, she is caught in flagrante delictu. In the Old Testament story, the false accusers themselves finally end up judged and condemned, and that is where the parallels end. Because in the Gospel, the accusers walk away. If only they had stayed! Then they would have found that they had not been condemned either. That is what struck me in my meditation: Jesus' question to the woman caught in adultery: "Has no one condemned you?" "No one." Yet her accusers, in departing after Jesus' magisterial, "Let the one without sin cast the first stone," had condemned themselves, and so were not there to hear Jesus ask each one of them if, in fact, they had been condemned by anyone. They would have learned that "God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him."

So much of religion in today's many caricatures seems caught up in condemnation. And yet St. Paul, too, was very clear--and I used the lovely aria "If God be for us" from Handel's Messiah in my meditation, too--God is about salvation and redemption. Condemnation is something we do.